An ability to efficiently pack items together in a confined space may be of value in commercial and/or non-commercial settings. The items to be packed may be of regular shape (e.g., items that are packaged in standardized boxes such that the items are the boxes themselves) or they may be of irregular and/or varied shape. In the latter case, a packing sequence may fall to a worker that is tasked with “eyeballing” various items to be packed to provide a realizable packing sequence on-the-fly. Such an approach may be inefficient and costly in terms of labor inputs and time, and may provide irregular, uncertain, inefficient, and/or inconsistent results.
The general problem of “bin packing” has been studied from a mathematical point of view. However, a mathematical solution is not necessarily a practical, implementable solution, since some mathematical components may be intractable in terms of available hardware resources. The intractability may be especially true given real-world demands for speed in determining a packing order.